Mary Ellen “pulled bacon” at the door he closed behind him. “’A ’ate th’ ’epplestalls,” she said cheekily, but her impudence fell from her as he returned. She thought he had heard her and had come to inflict punishment.
But Tom had not heard. “Walter,” he said, “if you value my friendship, there’s a thing you’ll not deny me.”
“Well?”
“I pay half. Let’s be fools together.”
Walter sucked meditatively at an empty pipe. “Aye,” he said, “we’re both bachelors and,” holding out the hand of partnership, “I’m generous by nature, Tom. Tell Mrs. Butterworth I want her as you go downstairs.”
CHAPTER III—MARY ELLEN
MARY ELLEN heard with trepidation that there was a Mrs. Butterworth on the premises; she was old enough to know that it was one thing to “get round” two men, and another to cozen a woman.
Her cozening had not been much more culpable than that of any one who sees a chance and determines not to fritter it away by understatement. It was not quite true, it was a propagandist gloss upon the truth, to say that she slept out on the brickfields, implying that she was homeless when she had sleeping rights in the fourth part of a bed in Jackman’s Buildings. But there had been no dissembling, no thought to please Tom Bradshaw, when she said she hated the Hepplestalls. She hated them because she hated the misery in which she lived and because they were the cause of her living in misery. That was her implicit belief and the guile had not been in stating it but in denying it when Tom commanded her denial.